Scattered Thoughts . . .

After our cruise on the Spirit of Ethan Allen on Lake Champlain, we headed to a restaurant for a nice meal.  We usually head up the hill from the waterfront to a restaurant on or near Church Street.  I can't remember why we didn't do that this time but we instead went to The Longhorn in Williston.  We all enjoy the food and service at The Longhorn so that is always a place to play it safe for a good meal.  When Sheila was going through cancer treatment, we stopped here on most days to eat lunch since it is so close to the hospital.  We were very much regular customers at this restaurant but then we stopped going to all restaurants for three years during the pandemic.  A couple of the same waitstaff are still working there so we continue to be recognized and treated very well.   Ace really likes this restaurant because of all the cows in paintings and art throughout the restaurant.  Every now and then he will notice another herd of cows and will excitedly point and scream out &q

A t 6:30 this morning, I got up for the third time to use the bathroom...  which itself is becoming more and more common as I get older...  but what was a bit unusual this morning is that I ended up in excruciating pain as a crumpled mess on the bathroom floor.  Getting up out of bed was extremely painful so I knew I was in for a rough morning at least for a short while.  I certainly wasn't expecting what happened though.  Getting out of bed was so painful this morning that I actually thought about grabbing my cane.  I quickly dismissed that idea, I think, because if I had to wake up enough to remember where I left my cane or to go looking for my cane, I would not be going back to bed after using the bathroom.  Too much thought would wake me enough that falling back asleep would be impossible.  I actually have two canes now but I have no idea where my older cane is located at the moment.   After carefully and painfully swinging my feet down off the bed and standing, I limped toward

J ust about all of this summer, thus far, has been nothing but rain showers, thunderstorms and flooding.  In between rain showers we get some sun trying to shine but, if the sun isn't obscured by clouds, the sun is mostly obscured by wildfire smoke from the Canadian wildfires.  For the most part, the skies have been far too consistently either cloudy or white due to wildfire smoke.   This wildfire smoke does not help my breathing issues at all.  I've been managing to get through each day without any major catastrophes (unlike earlier this year) but this calendar year, as a whole so far, has been filled with health problems and the leading and most consistently nagging problem has been difficulty breathing.  I'm pretty sure that even without the wildfire smoke, I would be struggling with breathing problems.  These breathing problems started with one of my bouts with COVID and it has not let up after my last bout with the virus.  The wildfire smoke is just not helping in the

So, once again, between rain showers, I've been pulling tools and lumber out of the shed so I can finish my dryer vent repair.  As rain showers would approach, I would quickly put everything back into the shed...  then back out again...  then back in...  etc.   ________________________________________________________________ To update - After all the moist, rainy weather over the past month or so, we noticed that our clean clothes were coming out of the dryer smelling terribly.  Once we opened the dryer door and stuck our head in the dryer, it was clear why our clothes were smelly after being in the dryer.  The dryer itself smelled terribly! It sort of smelled like a mouse nest or dead animal so I was originally thinking that I would find one or the other in the vent or inside the dryer.  I disassembled the dryer and found nothing.  Then I ran our shop vac up the vent from the outside to see if it would grab a dead animal.  Once again, I found nothing but some lint.   The photo, a

T his summer has really been quite lousy for scheduling a day out.  Every day seems to be filled with rain showers or steady rain or thunderstorms.  It has not been the summer for outdoor activities so far. Every year we try to schedule a few barbeques in the backyard around a fire, a few day outings at nearby attractions and we also spend a day with Sheila's parents and the grandkids on a cruise on Lake Champlain.  Although we would like to get together with a bunch of friends in the backyard, I think we've pretty much given up on socializing outside in the backyard lately. We've also been waiting on some good weather so we could go on our annual cruise on Lake Champlain with the grandchildren and Sheila's dad and that is what this blog entry is about this time.   We had a rare day-long break in the rain showers one day last week so we chose that day for our cruise.  I had managed to get the lawn mowed a couple days earlier in between rain showers but the day we chose